Tricks of the trade

Bill St. John, Special to Tribune Newspapers

Answering questions about wine is a big part of my job. People especially want to know what wine to serve with a certain dish or food. But many questions are in the "how to" family. Here are answers or assists to the most common.

How to ...

... save the wine in a half-filled bottle from spoiling

The great enemy of wine is oxygen. Left open to air, wine oxidizes and spoils (just like anything that starts with fruit). So, the best way to keep wine from spoiling is to keep it away from oxygen or oxidation — and there are several ways to skin that cat.

One way is to replace the air in the bottle. Some people squirt in nitrogen or another gas. It's even easier to simply pour the wine into a smaller container, such as an empty plastic water bottle. It's not as pretty as the original bottle and label, but the wine goes close or all the way to the top of the bottle's neck and scoots out any air.

Another solution is to place the half-filled bottle in your freezer on butt end — with the cork out — until the wine freezes. It really doesn't hurt the wine to do so and it pretty much retards oxidation. Just don't use the microwave to bring the wine back to life; defrost it for a couple of hours at room temperature.

A "vacuum pump" doesn't remove enough oxygen from a half-filled bottle of wine to work. It can't, or the bottle would implode.

... open a bottle without a corkscrew

Two years ago, a set of viral videos purported to illustrate how to open a bottle of wine, closed with a cork, by using your shoe and a wall or tree trunk (at picnics or campouts). The method works — sort of. It depends on the type of shoe, the resilience of the tree bark, the sort of cork (natural versus synthetic, the latter not working at all) and your time and patience (never under four minutes).

Basically, it's less a curiosity, more a pain and not surefire. Plus, it doesn't always work, and it seriously jostles the wine.

Apart from the obvious solutions of opening a sparkling wine such as Champagne, or drinking wine from a bag-in-the-box or from a bottle closed with a screw cap, you can — with some effort — push the cork slowly and steadily into the bottle, whereupon it will "float" on the liquid as you pour.

This method can be messy; it is awkward. But it does work. A Philips-head screwdriver may help at the start.

... remove the last half of a broken cork

Sometimes, when opening a bottle, especially an older vintage, the cork will snap off before it is fully withdrawn, leaving half or more in the neck of the bottle. At that point, you may do what is suggested above (push the rest of the cork slowly into the bottle) or, if you wish to continue using your corkscrew, here's a tip:

Reinsert the screw (or what is called the "worm") of the corkscrew at an angle and pull out the remainder of the cork without any leverage, merely muscle. The angle gives you a bit more "bite" than a regular, straight-in insertion and should do the trick.

... serve wine at the proper temperature

Every wine has its temperature. Light, white wines should be served well-chilled; sparkling wines, very cold (to keep the gas in solution). Some red wines taste better slightly chilled than they do at room temperature.

What are good rules of thumb and how to get there?

In general, the less there is "floating in the water" (alcohol, fruit extract, oak flavors, color), the colder the wine should be, around 45 degrees or overnight in the refrigerator. The more of everything that the wine has in it, the warmer the best serving temperature; but never, in the case of any wine, red or white, over 70 degrees.

So, full-bodied white wines such as fine white Burgundies taste delicious at around 55-60 degrees (up from the cellar or out of storage in the refrigerator for a half-hour or a bit more), while unoaked or medium-bodied chardonnays can take more chill.

Moderately tannic, fruity red wines — such as Beaujolais, young Rioja and the like — taste best at the temperature of spring or well water (55-60 degrees) and you can get there with an hour in the refrigerator, 10 minutes in the freezer, or 2-3 minutes in a bucket of ice and water. A neat trick in the absence of the kitchen is to wrap a wet towel around a bottle of such red wine; evaporation soon brings the temperature down to around 60-65 degrees.

No wine tastes best when it is warm, so even with full-bodied red wines such as stout Bordeaux, zinfandel or Aussie shiraz, give the wine a few minutes in the refrigerator or 2-3 minutes in ice and water.

Bill St. John has been writing and teaching about wine for more than 30 years.